Create a Mysterious Fashion Photo Manipulation in Photoshop

In this tutorial you'll learn how to use different custom brushes to create stormy weather, save your masks to save your time, work with different adjustment layers, and make adjustments only on small parts of the image to achieve the exact result you want. Let's get started!

Preview of Final Results

Mysterious Fashion Photo Manipulation Photoshop Tutorial

Resources

Step 1 - Preparation of Background

Download the picture with girl and main ground and open it in Photoshop. The photo was taken with slightly different intention, that's why there is some orange clothing. You'll get rid off that in this step. Create a new layer above the background. You can find the button "Create a new layer" in the bottom part of the palette Layers. If you don't see this palette simply press F7 on your keyboard or go to Window > Layers and it will appear.

Name the new layer e.g. REMOVE CLOTHING. It's good to name your layers because you can orient better than if you don't do it. Grab the Brush Tool (B). Press Alt on your keyboard to activate the Eyedropper Tool and pick some light color from the sky. Now start painting over the clothing to make it disappear and let sky appear instead.

You can get the inspiration of where to paint on in the picture above. As I said paint over the clothing but don't paint over the straws! They create nice impression of space so you want to let them in the picture. Then paint over the bush in the right bottom corner. It doesn't look photogenic and you'll add some better in following steps. After this step your image should look like the following.

Step 2 - Creating Selection of Woman

As you can see the sky and whole background is very uninteresting right now - it's just some light blue color and nothing more. To improve it you'll add mountains to the background and sky in following steps. Before you'll start it's necessary to make selection of the girl and save it. To do that grab the Lasso Tool (L) and select the girl.

Be as careful as possible while making the selection. If you don't do it carefully your manips will never look realistic. It can be boring and time consuming but it's totally worth it. If you're not sure how to use the Lasso Tool (L) or want to know about other methods of blending you can take a look at the article "A Photomanipulator's Guide to Blending" here on Photoshop Tutorials. As I said you need to save the selection to be able to use it later. To do that go to Select > Save Selection ... and as Name write e.g. Woman. Press OK.

Press Ctrl + D on your keyboard to deselect it. You'll came back to the selection soon.

Step 3 - Adding Mountains

Download the picture of mountains and drag it to the picture. Press Ctrl + T on your keyboard and resize the picture on proper size. Then press Enter to apply the resizing. Rename the layer on MOUNTAINS and place it on the top of all layers. To blend the layer with the rest of the picture change its Blending Mode on Overlay. You can find the Blending Mode option in the upper part of the palette Layers.

Your manipulation should look like the following picture. As you can see the mountains are well blended with the sky but they're also on the woman which looks really weird.

10 comments on “Create a Mysterious Fashion Photo Manipulation in Photoshop”

Nilton says:

April 9, 2015 at 1:49 pm

Thanks for stopping by!I use Lightroom and Photoshop for my pp'ing. I'm rlleay just learning still have found some actions that I like that I have actually rlleay learned a lot from using.

Deepak says:

February 18, 2014 at 8:42 pm

struck in first step...plz tell me how u remove cloth and retain the straw..plz mail me the solution so that i can go for second step

An3 says:

February 5, 2014 at 6:44 pm

And here's mine:
http://oi59.tinypic.com/2c126w.jpg
:)
I used a different mountain - the original is missing.

1. Buffie says:
  
  April 9, 2015 at 7:30 am
  
  Alirght alright alright that's exactly what I needed!
Magda says:

November 26, 2013 at 1:09 pm

Hi,
Great tutorial, thanks.
And this is my result: https://imageshack.com/i/0lh0uxj
I have made snow instead of rain ; )

Niroshan Ishanka says:

November 17, 2013 at 11:37 pm

This is really amazing.. its great. but given model image resoulution is not enough for this type of design. Thanks..

1. Maya says:
  
  April 9, 2015 at 9:57 am
  
  Those were very educational Terence! It was like you took us into atenhor world that we would never see & into the eyes of those that work up in the sky. The shot behind the crane operator was awesome and I loved the candid shots that you took. Amazing work my friend! Must have been quite the experience.
alec says:

September 17, 2013 at 8:34 pm

amazing. thks!

chenyark says:

May 21, 2013 at 8:37 pm

Thank you very much,I love you !

Nayeem says:

August 15, 2012 at 10:08 am

i liked it very much...thnk u